Final Fantasy stopped being worthwhile years ago. IIRC FF12 was genuinely bad (I didn't stick with it long, but the only thing it had going for it were the production values). I don't understand how they can still be milking it.

FF8 was the last one for me. I fell hard for 7 as I was new to play station. The constant whinging by cloud and party grated though. I soon realised I was playing the same game a few hours into 8, only with even more teenage angst.

I think the Final fantasy brand -like many others- is slowly being run into the ground. But unlike companies like THQ, square is still able to make money off brand loyalty over common sense. For all that people are panning this game, I expect to check on its sale stats and see that it is in the top 20 for apps. I shall be shocked if it isn't on the 'top grossing' app list by the end of the month.

And I think they will be able to keep milking this for years yet. I know I have bought final fantasy 1 for both my old phone and for iOS. I haven't purchased any of the others yet as I haven't finished FF1... But when I have finished FF1 and I see FF2 on sale at christmas? I will quite likely break down and pick it up just because I remember liking it.

That longing to return how it felt the first time I played it is what they are banking on. It isn't too strong in me, as I play FF1 for maybe an hour or two a week. So many other, better, shiny games are out there. But I will finish it at one point and go looking for another.

Fingers crossed that a good WW2 dog-fighting app shows up first

As for this game, it doesn't draw me in the same way. I liked the building up my own team and making my own stories for my characters in the Final Fantasy worlds. Once the characters were named for me I was not as into the series.

I think the only one with named characters I finished was the shortish one with the monkey boy. Didn't try the MMO's, nor any on the PS3.

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Actually, as I type this I look over at some of my son's stuff. He is just going onto 3 soon and I can identify three major brands that make up so much of what he plays with. I think we have all that those brands offer for iOS apps as well. He is already down this rabbit hole for Cars, Thomas the Tank Engine and Chuggington.

- I even clipped out the local college's course description of a train engineer (2 year course) because I am curious to see how it's description changes as he grows up. -

Oh well. I seem to have strayed a bit from the subject. Long live the internet. And the squeals of joy when Square promises FF7 for those who long for it.

Thinking of Square Enix the publisher, they've done some stuff that I like a lot: Front Mission, Tactics Ogre, Dragon Quest, The Third Birthday, Deus Ex, Hitman, Exit, Just Cause 2, Nier, Odin Sphere, TWEWY, Valkyrie Profile, and so on.

But some of the stuff they develop is beyond the pale. The unashamed milking of FF7 reached ridiculous heights, and to go on to develop sequels for outright shit games (FF13) is bizarre. Why are companies in the game industry so short-sighted?

It is, but AFAIK it's commercial, not creative. Looking at my games, the Japs have created great stuff, quite often projects that would never get beyond the pitch phase in the West: Catherine, 999, Earth Defence Force, Vanquish, Dark Souls, Sine Mora, Lollipop Chainsaw, Way of the Samurai, Yakuza, Child of Eden, Disgaea, Katamari Damacy, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and so on.

Of course, there's the running into the ground of some really big IPs (Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill) but I don't think that's in any way unique to Japan, whereas their really good stuff is.

I always put Vanquish forward as a case of Japanese devs doing a very Western game genre better than Western game studios, a cover shooter but ramped up to 110%, not afraid to go absolutely bullet-hell crazy every five minutes, while integrating blatant game mechanics like a scoring system into a genre which is supposedly more realistic.

It's certainly inbred, but I think even the really big publishers that are responsible for the worst excesses (war crimes phrase, bonus) in Japan also fund/distribute some unique games, whereas the Western equivalents don't. The kind of games that Hunter S. Thompson might have described as "One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

I fully believe many iOS gamers get what they deserve and the fuckers will bring the rest of us down with them.

Just had a peek at the reviews for this shit biscuit of a game in the UK AppStore. Most are five star, the contrary 1 star reviews bring it down to 3.

If we tolerate this, your children will be next. Or not, it's only a game after all. We could all go back to playing with a stick and hoop as the AppStore descends into a wasteland of corporate shills screaming "give us your money and we will show you such pretty pretty things". Cunts.

For anyone like me who has done themselves the disservice of purchasing this game (for... science...) and has completionist tendencies as well, just manually set your iDevice's clock forward an hour or two (or three if you want the Fever bonus) so you can get your party back instantly.